Paul Casserly: 'If it's good enough for Tony Soprano'

Paul Henry. Photo / Jane Ussher

TV blogger Paul Casserly examines television highlights from the past week.

We made it through winter only to be bashed upside the head by spring and the final episodes of one of "the greatest shows ever made".

Is it just me, or now that the dust has settled, has that final of Breaking Bad lost some of its lustre? Regardless, the fun will be in watching it all again from the get go. After all, The Sopranos distilled so beautifully.

I'm currently making my way through Madmen again thanks to some seriously good binge programming on Soho and I'm fighting the urge to declare it "the greatest show ever made."

What plumb could possibly measure the grim depths of Don's Draper's psyche? What could be more fun than Roger Sterling on acid? How brilliant the development of Sally Beth Draper?

However recent days have also brought portents of the end-times. The Vote is to be axed. This Town will not return. Media 3 gone. Worst of all, Nightline is said to be making way for our own version of The Daily Show hosted by Paul Henry. I know, those words don't actually make any sense, but that seems to be the PR push.

Anyway here's what they were saying on the box over the past month. Try and guess who said what. And just to keep you on your toes, one of them is a quote from Paul Henry's new book and one of them is from a Mayoral candidate.

1. "China has been around for a long time and it's not going anywhere."

2. "It's probably not easy to play a board game with me."

3. "Yes they were 3D glasses."

4. "Eva Braun told her sisters that Himmler gave her the shivers."

5. "A sparrow with a mohawk and a red bum."

6. "I have a small penis but I have a tattoo of a large penis on the side of it."

7. "I feel like you came in and spouted a lot of nonsense."

8. "If it's good enough for Tony Soprano then it's good enough for Peter."

9. "You will be watching mindless s*** as they hook you with a long winded promise of something possibly fantastic that may change the way you live forever. The fact is these programmes are just stopping you from living now."

10. "I was unaware of the relationship."

THE ANSWERS

1. "China has been around for a long time and it's not going anywhere." John Key sounding pretty relaxed about the yellow peril while subbing in for Obama at the ASEAN summit.

2. "It's probably not easy to play a board game with me." Jimmy Spithill on 60 Minutes revealing what we all suspected after watching him slowly force Dean Barker into that excruciating checkmate. Still the bastard kept talking up the on-board crew with hardly a mention of the boat-builders and designers who really won the thing, so we can still rightfully hate him a little, can't we?

3. "Yes they were 3D glasses." In what used to be known as the "and your letters too" section of 60 Minutes, in reference to the fascinating David Tua Story that ran the previous week. Reporter Karen McCarthy took us inside the new world of our most famous pugilist as he tries to regain the magic. Tua was seen topping up the oil in his old school mini, scoffing salmon and wandering about Onehunga wearing what looked like the 3D glasses you got at Avatar. Turns out they were. "He just likes wearing them."

4. "Eva Braun told her sisters that Himmler gave her the shivers." Said the narrator on the History Channel's In Love With Adolf Hitler. The world's worst character judgement from the world's worst judge of character. Apart from Bevan.

5. "A sparrow with a mohawk and a red bum." Conservation Minister Nick Smith describing the Red-vented Bulbul, the so-called 'angry bird' that he wants exterminated. And a good job too, the little buggers are "one of the most invasive bird species in the world, are a threat to native birds like the kereru, as well as fruit and vegetable crops, including grapes, berries and tomatoes." I'm looking forward to shooting them from the monorail.

6. "I have a small penis but I have a tattoo of a large penis on the side of it." Perhaps the greatest moment ever on Seven Sharp, delivered by their best host ever, Rob Schneider, who managed to get his line out when Stacey Morrison (nee Daniels) finally finished raving about how Rhianna understood the mana of the moko she received while in NZ. That would be the one that has now been reportedly covered up.

7. "I feel like you came in and spouted a lot of nonsense." Said John Campbell to Simon Bridges, the minster of Energy and Resources and pissing off Kaikoura, in one of the feistiest TV encounters of the year.

8. "If it's good enough for Tony Soprano then it's good enough for Peter." In reference to Coronation Street's Peter Barlow after he said he was off to see a shrink, although of course he was lying and was really off to root Carla in her flat that looks like it was decorated by Pete and Andy from The Block.

9. "You will be watching mindless s*** as they hook you with a long winded promise of something possibly fantastic that may change the way you live forever. The fact is these programmes are just stopping you from living now." He may be stating the obvious but he's bang on the money for once. That's Paul Henry deriding TV show's that don't feature Paul Henry, in his latest book, Outraged. Naturally he gets stuck into cripples, fatties and lefties but saves his most intense outrage for Seven Sharp and Mark Sainsbury, like a jilted lover who can't stop banging on about their ex.

10. "I was unaware of the relationship." Said an exasperated John Palino who found himself trapped by Campbell Live's relentless Rebecca Wright.

He started off hopefully, saying, "I put my heart and soul into this campaign ... " but Wright wasn't having a bar of it and within seconds Palino looked like a man who had lost the will to live.

RW: "What were you doing for an hour-and-a-half with her (Bevan Chuang) in your car, the day before the story broke?"

JP: "She asked to be with me, she said 'John can I see you?' ... and we were talking about the texts that we all got and why we received those texts."

RW: "It's implausible Mr Palino. Are you telling us that you had no idea that your right hand man Luigi Wewege was in cahoots with the son of your campaign manager about this, and you had no idea?"

Finally, as John crawled into his Audi he managed to get in the last word.

"Why is someone who's a volunteer on my campaign having an affair with the Mayor? Why don't you ask that question?"

The word "implausible" hung in the air like a Labrador's fart as he drove away.